TMNT: Shine Again
by tmntpunx
Summary: 2k12 show. April reflects on memories of her childhood and stolen moments with Donatello in the Northampton house. April x Donatello.


April laid across the old quilt that covered her childhood bed, pens and pencils scattered around her. A journal which she had unapologetically ignored since childhood was opened to a blank page before her. It had been there, waiting for her at the old house. She had found it tucked away in a dresser drawer, with an bag of old potpourri and a gameboy without any batteries; relics of a life that was utterly ordinary, once.

There had only been a few entries in the journal. Some written in pencil, others written in sparkly gel pens, each revealing fragments of precious mundane days spent climbing trees of catching frogs in the creek behind the house. She had stopped writing, after her mother died. April didn't remember abandoning the journal in that dresser drawer. There was so little she wanted to remember about those last days in the Northampton house. The house where her mother had made them all pancakes every Saturday morning. The house where they had spent their final days together.

Now her father was gone, but she wasn't going to stop writing. Not this time. She wanted to remember, even if it hurt. It was the only way to make sense of everything that was happening. If her life had ever been ordinary, it was only because she wasn't looking hard enough. April sighed. Her life had been under a microscope ever since she had met the turtles, and they had only just scratched the surface as to who she was. Or what she was. She wondered if her mother knew.

"Penny for your thoughts?" came a shy voice.

Her blue eyes widened. When she realized she had absentmindedly filled the blank page with a sketch of her father's face, she scrambled to shut the journal before Donatello could see. She knew he would understand. After the invasion, April was no longer the only one who knew what it was to be orphaned. Somehow, this brought her little solace.

The turtle's shadow stretched across the old hardwood floor in the dying light, long and gangly, and almost as awkward as he was. When her eyes met his, he was smiling that uncomfortable gap-toothed grin.

"Am I interrupting?"

"Yes. No. I mean - " she sighed. "It's fine, Donatello."

"I can go -" he began.

"Don't go," April shook her head. "Please."

She had spent enough time alone.

The turtle approached, slowly, his thumbs shoved into the wide leather belt that encompassed his torso and his shell. She craned her neck to glance up at him; in all these years she had never really realized how tall he was. These last few months she had led her to see the turtles in a whole new light. Sharing a bathroom did things to friendships. Things that couldn't be undone. April had gotten in the habit of keeping her toothbrush on her nightstand, like she was at summer camp. But summer camp was a thing normal kids did.

Donatello sat beside her, and the aging mattress sagged beneath their weight. The old metal bed frame creaked in protest. It was a child's bed. Small, still covered in stuffed animals. Somehow they made her feel less alone. So every night, she took them up in her arms, and put them on the floor. Every morning, she gathered them up again, and nestled them amongst her pillows. They sat. They watched. They said nothing. But somehow, they still made her feel less alone.

The sun was setting beyond the window, coloring the yellow walls of her childhood bedroom red. Nights were cold in Northampton. Though Donatello had managed to flip the circuit breaker and get the power back online at the house, the heater had been less than cooperative. But Donatello had had more pressing matters to attend to, like the mutagen medicine for Leonardo. One night April had found him sleeping at his desk in the barn. When she returned with a blanket from the house, he was still there, slouched over his desk amidst all of his papers and empty test tubes. He did not wake when she tucked it around him. Neither of them had said anything the next morning.

Another night, she had laid awake in the dark, too cold to sleep, despite being buried under heavy quilts, layered over wool socks and leggings and her father's old sweatshirt. She convinced herself if she laid perfectly still, she could conserve heat, somehow. Night had brought a cold so hard and deep that it made her bones ache. She hadn't remembered nights like these, growing up in the Northampton house. The vents still rattled when she turned the thermostat up, but there was no warmth there. Not anymore.

April had swung her legs over the side of the bed, and made her way down the hall. Donatello had left his door open; the light was still on. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, trying to keep her teeth from chattering, trying not to wake him. He was asleep. Like she should have been. It would have been so easy to crawl into bed next to him, to draw the blankets over the both of them. That was a thing normal teenagers did when adults weren't around, right? Snuck into each other's bedrooms - had sleepovers they weren't meant to have. Minutes passed like hours in the dark. April did not know how long she stood there, but in the end, she turned the light off before she went back to bed.

"You ok?"

She blinked, realizing she had been staring into the blank black eyes of a stuffed bear at the end of the bed. Glancing up at him, she asked, "Are any of us ok, really?"

Donatello chuckled, even though she had not intended for her words to be a joke. But that was why she had asked him to stay - wasn't it? For a little bit of levity? If there was another reason, April wasn't ready to talk about it. She had turned the light off, after all.

April's eyes drifted up to the window. The sun was setting over the trees, casting long shadows in the grass. The winter snow had become spring rain. But the nights were still cold in Northampton.

She hadn't remembered nights like these, where the dark only brought cold and quiet. When she was little the night sky was full of shining stars. On nights like those, she climbed the roof with her father to get a glimpse of all those stars with her telescope. Like possibilities, those stars seemed endless. Now the night sky just loomed over them, black and vast and unknown. Her father was no longer there to help her with her telescope. How was she supposed to see the stars without him?

Just as she was becoming lost in her thoughts again, something brushed up against her hand.

"You know," he began, smiling that awkward smile. "I'm always here, if you need us." Then his eyes widened. "I-I mean _we're_ here," he stuttered. "If you need us."

April smiled. "Thanks, Don."

She wondered if her telescope was still up in the attic. They hadn't packed it up when they left Northampton; her father had told her that the light pollution was too bad to see anything in the City anyway. But maybe if she could find it, she and Don could take it up to the roof. And maybe, just maybe, they could still see the stars.


End file.
